Cruise ship debts leave tourists stranded

Several hundred passengers on a luxury round-the-world cruise-ship tour were stuck Thursday on an island in the Atlantic Ocean after the vessel's owners ran into legal troubles.

The 460 passengers and 200 crewmembers were marooned after their cruise ship sailed into a port in the Madeira Islands, a Portuguese archipelago about 684 kilometers (425 miles) west of Morocco. Portuguese authorities detained the ship, the Van Gogh on Tuesday because of a legal claim against the ship's owners, said Marcus Neal, operations manager for Van Gogh Cruises. They seized it in the port of Funchal, a city of about 100,000. The passengers were making their next-to-last stop on a 93-day cruise around the world. They paid between $12,000 and $44,000 for the voyage. Passengers are able to leave the ship, said British actress Shirley Ann Field, who was among those on board, but she said most were staying put until the dispute was resolved. The Van Gogh is owned by a Dutch company called Club Cruise, and it had been chartered for years by a separate company, Travelscope Holidays. Van Gogh Cruises, which operates the ship, said it did not know why the administrators launched their claim shortly before the end of the cruise, rather than afterwards.

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